Johann Most is one of the more misunderstood gures in U.S. anarchist history. His reputation is shaped by a legacy of vili cation in the mainstream press, with the foreign-born Most being the target of JOHANN MOST relentless attacks by the newspapers of his day. In Most, the forces of capitalism and order found the stereotype of the wild-eyed anarchist bent on destruction. by Emma Goldman

While Most was indeed an advocate of violent revolution, he did far more than just sling violent rhetoric. Most was a tireless anarchist organizer, for years publishing the German language Freiheit, touring the United States on the lecture circuit, and contributing to development of the anarchist movement. In the early 1880s when Most arrived in the United States, he immediately set out to build a stronger anarchist movement, launching a successful lecture tour that resulted in the formation of many new groups.

The portrait of Johann Most as an anarchist dedicated to the building of an anarchist movement has largely been lost, as even historians of anarchism have focused on his rhetoric. And while by all accounts he had great rhetorical powers, there is more to Most than just his legacy of ery speeches.

This zine presents a biographical essay about Most by Emma Goldman, originally published in The American Mercury. It is notable for its profoundly human portrayal of Most, providing a biographical sketch and evaluating his role in the movement. The essay is accompanied by a critical introduction that explores how Most has been portrayed over the years.

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Introduction

Johann Most was one of the most prominent and important fi gures in the anarchist space in the United States during the last two decades of the 19 th century. Most—who had gained a reputation in Europe as a harsh critic of capitalism and parliamentary socialism—was an ardent revolutionary, delivering speeches and writing articles in his Freiheit newspaper advocating the necessity of revolution.

In response to growing repression in Europe, Most immigrated to the United States and inserted himself into the German anarchist movement. From his arrival in the United States in 1882, Most had a notorious reputation in the mainstream press. He was constantly vilifi ed and belittled, becoming a lightning rod for anti-anarchist and nativist attacks. Most became the personifi cation of the wild-eyed, bomb throwing anarchist, being an example of the “anarchist beast” so often portrayed in the media of the day. 1 In Most, the forces of order and capitalism found the perfect enemy: a foreign-born anarchist advocating for violent action. Most was targeted by law enforcement, spending time in both jail and in prison. His son, John Most Jr. recalled his family was regularly harassed as they walked through their poor working-class neighborhood. 2

Most was without a doubt a fi ery orator, and his militancy was no joke. He was after all, the anarchist who wrote the notorious Revolutionary War Science, a pamphlet outlining how to make dynamite bombs. Of Most’s speaking style, Chaim Weinberg recalls:

“To convey the manner in which Most spoke is impossible. Only those lucky enough to have heard him sometime will really understand the veracity of my claim. To say that Most could inspire an audience is not enough. He electrifi ed, simply enchanted each listener, whether an adversary or a friend”3

and:

“I don’t exaggerate one bit. Johann Most could so mesmerize his listeners that they would at any time go with him should he call them to man the barricades. He 26 3 could bring the apathetic person to tears with his hypnotizing power.” 4

The majority of portrayals of Johann Most fail to capture this. While they may acknowledge that he had a powerful personality, they don’t delve into the particulars, instead choosing to highlight the ways in Most—and he is almost always assigned exclusive responsibility— brought the anarchist movement into “disrepute.” 5 His propaganda and “explicit incitement... contributed to anarchists’ being held responsible for any violent disturbances.” 6 He is described as “obsessed by revolutionary violence,” discussing it “...with the sinister enthusiasm of a malevolent and utterly irresponsible child.” 7 He was described as “anxiously waiting for some terrorist act to be committed in Germany or Austria to bolster up the enthusiasm of his congregation.” 8 It’s no accident that the one English language biography of Most is titled The Voice of Terror .9 These portrayals persist into the present, with books on terrorism often including at least a cursory mention of Most’s advocacy of violent revolution.10

However, beyond the rhetoric, Johann Most had a substantial infl uence on anarchism in the United States. He was a strong organizer, for years publishing his newspaper Freiheit, touring the country on the lecture circuit, and dedicating himself to the pursuit of anarchy. It is telling that one of Most’s fi rst acts when coming to the United States was to hit the lecture circuit, a tour that resulted in the formation of a number of anarchist groups. 11 Unfortunately, the legacy of Most as a tireless anarchist dedicated to the revolution is a portrayal that is often ignored. Paul Avrich’s excellent The Haymarket Tragedy is one of the best English language sources to delve into this history, discussing Most’s role in facilitating the spread of anarchism, the establishment of the International Working People’s Association (IWPA), and his infl uence on the anarchists in Chicago who would become forever associated with the Haymarket incident. 12 Still, it retains the view of Most as a rather simplistic thinker—a “polemicist rather than a thinker” who could incite with slogans, but developed little by way of original revolutionary theory. 13 Arguably, Most’s writings have somewhat fallen into obscurity, but they have been consistently circulated over the years, with new generations of anarchist publishing his writings. 14 There has

4 25 after the abrogation of the Exceptional Laws, were replaced by green- also been some renewed interest in Most, with Tom Goyen’s excellent grocers and butchers, who fl ocked to America for her gold and not Beer and Revolution presenting a much more complete portrait of both in search of her imaginary freedom. On the other hand, the earlier Most and the German anarchist space in the United States.15 German immigrants became weary of the struggle, and their children were Americanized. They had nothing of the independent quality of Most’s legacy has also been largely one of personality confl icts, of their parents and were quickly absorbed by what is coarse and common which his feud with the anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander in the new land. Gradually Most found himself a general without an Berkman has been central. Historical assessments of Johann Most army, a prophet without disciples, an alien in his environment. Yet tend to portray him as a short-tempered and intolerant person, the man’s spirit could not be broken. He died a fi ghter to the end. largely making his personal life into an extension of his fi ery media constructed image. For example, Alex Wexler describes Most as “... an autocrat—vain, theatrical, domineering, short-tempered, intolerant of difference, given to fi erce rages and smoldering resentments.” 16 James Joll similarly highlighted Most’s involvement in bitter confl icts. 17

Of these confl icts, none has received more attention than his feud with Emma Goldman. Goldman and Most were both comrades and lovers in the 1880s. However, they drifted apart over the years, with Goldman aligning with the autonomist faction of German anarchists, a group that was hostile to Most’s dominance of the movement and advocating a slightly different tactical orientation in favor of small groups. 18 Most and the autonomist camp were bitter rivals, with Alexander Berkman once stating that the feud between Joseph Peukert of the autonomists and Johann Most was the only thing keeping the two factions alive. 19 Importantly, Goldman criticized Most for his conservative views on gender and the overall male dominance of the German anarchist space.20 However, the act that made them into bitter enemies—or as the story is often told—was Alexander Berkman’s 1892 attempt to assassinate businessman Henry Clay Frick for his role in the Homestead Strike. Goldman was in complete support of the act, helping with its conception and the propaganda in defense of it, 21 while her comrades in the autonomist faction also expressed support. 22 Most was opposed to the act and criticized it after the fact.

Less often discussed is that Most had been moderating his views on violence for some time.23 Six weeks before Berkman’s attentat, Most had published an article in Freiheit criticizing violent tactics wherein violence was an end in itself. 24 Similarly, while he did denounce

24 5 and ridicule Berkman in speeches, Freiheit , and the capitalist press, particular act of Czolgosz. Had Most not omitted the signature of the he did eventually write a piece that more seriously refl ected on the author and the date when the article was originally written, the attempt failure of attentants to generate public sympathy. 25 Goldman— to send him to prison again could not have been based on that issue probably rightly— continued to criticize him, leading to the famous of his publication. As it was, he was condemned to Blackwell’s Island “horsewhipping” incident in which she publicly demanded that Most for the third time. Thus for thirty successive years he was hounded. provide evidence of his charges against Berkman. When he dismissed her as a “hysterical woman” she lashed him across the face with a VII horsewhip, an incident of which she wrote about in Living My Life .26 Goldman described the act as the culmination of the confl ict between Johann Most was essentially a leader of masses. He had hardly Peukert and Most, moving it beyond a personal feud into a debate that any personal life; his whole being was consumed by his work for “...raised a storm within the entire anarchist movement, splitting it into humanity. Naturally, there were women in his life. He was married in two inimical camps.” 27 Germany when quite young and later on there were other emotional experiences. He had much attraction for women and they for him. Historians—even those of anarchism—tend all too often to focus But his real mistress was his work, and that led him through thorny on the “great personalities”—and the confl icts of Goldman and Most paths, and over heights and depths which excluded domestic peace fi t into that frame. The famous horsewhipping incident functions or bliss. In his later years, after the tide of his followers receded, the as a way to avoid investigating the confl icting ideas behind the feud, woman who bore him two sons may have been a soothing factor in instead focusing on a clash of personalities. Seemingly having the his life, though even that is doubtful in the case of such a restless, last word, it is Goldman’s portrayal that often stands out. However, roaming spirit. In the early part of 1906, in poor physical condition as Goldman was no stranger to criticism and her portrayals of Johann a result of his numerous imprisonments, he saw himself compelled to Most in Living My Life spurred Most’s wife Helene Minkin—herself undertake a lecture tour to maintain his paper. But he did not get very an anarchist who contributed to the movement by managing Freiheit far. In Cincinnati he fell seriously ill, dying on March 17. With him and doing other such projects—to heavily criticize Goldman. Minkin went one of the most picturesque and unique characters of our time. argued that Goldman’s portrayal “...drags [Most] from his heights and through the mud of her story.” 28 While the incident fi gures The pathos of Most’s last years is the tragedy of all leaders who are prominently in anarchist historical accounts, Goldman had in fact over carried away by numbers and intoxicated by applause. He joined the time come to forgive Most. Later in Living My Life , she writes of the labor movement at the period of its idealistic beginning. Owing to his “senselessness of that feud” and says that she attempted to reconcile extraordinary oratorical gifts, his powerful and unique pen, his passionate with Most.29 However, Minkin criticized the entire incident and casts faith and personal magnetism, he was able to rouse the masses as few doubt on Goldman’s attempts at reconciliation. 30 Minkin also writes before him, but in his onrush toward the heights he took no time to look that Goldman’s allegation that Minkin didn’t want Goldman to speak behind him, to see whether the masses could or would keep pace with him. at Most’s memorial was untrue. 31 Contrasting accounts aside, Goldman grew to have misgivings about the incident. Goldman later said that Until America became sealed to political refugees, the radical she regretted the act in a letter to the anarchist historian Max Nettlau. 32 elements forced to fl ight by the tyranny of their own lands continued She wrote that “I often regretted to have attacked the man who was my to seek asylum in the United States. They furnished fertile soil for what teacher, and whom I idealized for many years.” 33 Even Berkman—who Most so brilliantly brought to them. But the time came when the quality was the subject of the harshest attacks—wrote: of immigration changed. The revolutionary refugees of Germany,

6 23 an estrangement owing to differences of conception, experience and temperament. We were at the height of enthusiasm, of religious zeal, of “He had been unjust to me; but who is free from moments of weakness? The passionate faith. We had not yet been tried in the crucible and did not passage of time has mellowed the bitterness of my resentment, and I think of him, know agony of spirit. Most, though still deeply devoted to the cause of my fi rst teacher of Anarchy, with old-time admiration.” 34 humanity, had gone through fi erce confl icts. Between us there was thus the abyss which separates youth and latter middle age. We owed much It is in this context that we present this biographical sketch of to Most, I more than the others. It was he who had been my teacher, Johann Most written by Emma Goldman. It was published in The my guide into a new world of social ideas, to new beauty in art and American Mercury in 1926, with Goldman using the money from it to music. Most loved both intensely and helped me to learn to love them. travel to France to visit with the artist Frank Harris. 35 It is notable We had been friends for two years and we spent much time together, for it’s profoundly human portrayal of Most, moving well beyond the during which I learned to know the lights as well as the shadows in focus on personalities and confl ict to highlight the contributions Most his character, his childlike faith in people who were kind to him, his made to anarchism and his unfl inching dedication to “the ideal.” susceptibility to subtle fl attery, his quick impatience with opposition. “Who is not with me is against me,” he would frequently say—and that was the key to his attitude. Most was intense and extreme in his loves Endnotes as well as in his hates. He gave freely and demanded much in return. Life had struck him many blows, but it had also let him drink deeply 1 Nathaniel Hong, “Constructing the Anarchist Best in American Periodical Literature, 1880- 1903,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 9, 1992, 110-130 from the well of glory, homage and intellectual adulation He could not 2 “John J. Most, Jr” in Paul Avrich, ed., Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America , content himself with less. And we were young and impatient. Youth Abridged Edition, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 13. is cruelly impatient and critical. Therefore the gradual estrangement. 3 Chaim Leib Weinberg, Forty Years in the Struggle: Memoirs of a Jewish Anarchist , (Duluth: Litwin Books, 2001), 7, accessed at http://www.deadanarchists.org/Weinberg/Forty.pdf Still Johann Most continued to stand high in our esteem and affection. 4 Weinberg, 9. 5 Atindranath Bose, A History of Anarchism, (Calcutta: The World Press, 1967), 15. But when he turned his back on the act of Alexander Berkman, 6 James Joll, The Anarchists, (New York: The Universal Library, 1966), 166. 7 George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements , (New York: The an act of the “propaganda by deed” that he himself had so often World Publishing, 1962), 461. and enthusiastically glorifi ed in others, the blow was staggering to 8 Max Nomad, Apostles of Revolution , (New York: Collier Books, 1961). 289. us. I could then neither understand nor forgive what seemed to me 9 Frederic Trautmann, The Voice of Terror: A Biography of Johann Most , (Westport: Green Press, 1980). a betrayal of all that the man had so eloquently and passionately 10 Isaac Cronin, ed., Confronting Fear: A History of Terrorism , (New York: Thunder’s Mountain advocated for years. I became embittered against my former teacher, Press, 2002), 15. and I added my stone to the many that were hurled at him. One’s own 11 Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 64-65. 12 Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy, 164-173. spiritual Calvary makes one understand things, and the complexity 13 Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy, 63. of human nature becomes much clearer with the accumulating years. 14 For example, Sea Sharp Press published a pamphlet containing “The Social Monster” and “The Beast of Property”, distributed as of 2015 by the prominent anarchist distributor AK Press. Zabalaza Books in 2014 published a version of “The God Pestilence.” The Match!—an In 1901, when Leon Czolgosz killed President McKinley, Most anarchist newspaper in the United States—published “The God Pestilence” as a pamphlet in again became the target of police persecution. The issue of the Freiheit , 1983. which appeared on the day of the act, contained an article on the 15 Tom Goyens, Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880-1914 , (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007). general question of tyrannicide by the old revolutionist, Carl Heinzen, 16 Alice Wexler, Emma Goldman: An Intimate Life, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 52. then dead for a number of years. It had no bearing whatever on the 17 Joll, 143-144. 18 Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich, Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman 22 7 and Emma Goldman, (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012), 41-45. VI 19 Avrich and Avrich, 45. 20 Tom Goyens, “Introduction,” in Helene Minkin, Storm in my Heart: Memories from the Widow of Johann Most , (Oakland: AK Press, 2015), 11-12. During the trial at Chicago and the anxious time between the 21 Emma Goldman, Living My Life, Vol. 1, (1930; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, conviction and execution of Parsons, Spies, Fisher, Engel and Lingg, 1970), 88. 22 Goldman, 98. Most was still in prison. Perhaps it was his good fortune that he 23 Avrich and Avrich, 46. was not at large, otherwise he too would have undoubtedly fallen 24 Avrich and Avrich, 89. a prey to the blood-thirst that gripped the country. Later on, upon 25 Avrich and Avrich, 87-88. 26 Goldman, 105. his release, he addressed the weekly gathering of the International 27 Goldman, 106. Workers’ Association, dealing with the Chicago tragedy and the heroic 28 Helene Minkin, Storm in my Heart: Memories from the Widow of Johann Most , (Oakland: AK last moments of his martyred comrades. He laid the guilt not only Press, 2015), 26. 29 Goldman, 379. at the door of the enemies of labor but to the workers themselves, 30 Minkin, 72-73. the great majority of whom had remained so cowardly inert in the 31 Minkin, 125. face of the calamity. The next day the New York World contained a 32 Wexler, 66. 33 Avrich and Avrich, 188. grotesquely garbled account of Most’s talk. He immediately wrote 34 Avrich and Avrich, 188. to the paper, calling attention to the misrepresentation. But the 35 Emma Goldman, Living My Life, Vol. 2, (1930; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, report had already been copied by other publications, producing 1970), 981. the intended effect. Most was arrested. The testimony of the State witnesses at his trial was so obviously false that the case was on the point of breaking down. At that juncture the prosecuting attorney produced a pamphlet, “The Science of Warfare,” written by Most some time prior to the Chicago events. On that alleged evidence he was found guilty. Though the case was appealed, the Supreme Court sustained the conviction, and he was again sent to Blackwell’s Island.

His tremendous power of endurance enabled Most to emerge from this experience still strong in body; but he was no longer so buoyant in spirit. His faith in the emancipatory possibilities of American labor had become weakened. He began to doubt the effi cacy of direct individual revolutionary action. It was partly this, as well as the revolutionary weariness of a man who had been hounded for twenty-fi ve years, that colored his view of the signifi cance of Alexander Berkman’s act of July, 1892, when the latter attempted the life of Henry C. Frick, the man responsible for the slaughter of the Homestead steel strikers by Pinkertons. Most repudiated the act.

There had been, even before this, an estrangement between the group of young people to which Berkman and myself belonged and Most—

8 21 by the delegates. This document played an important part in the early “Johann Most” by Emma Goldman stages of the radical movement in the United States. A certain clause in the declaration voiced the right of the workers to arm themselves, a The name of Johann Most was for many years known throughout right guaranteed by the Constitution when that scrap of paper still had the United States. Thanks to the press, it was a name to strike meaning. The framers of the demand therefore considered themselves terror into the heart of the ordinary reader. In endless columns the within their legal rights in discussing the subject publicly. With that in newspapers portrayed the man as the incarnation of Satan, a wild view a mass-meeting was arranged for April 25, 1886, at Germania Hall beast run amuck, leaving chaos and destruction behind him. To the in New York City. Most and other orators elaborated upon the subject American philistine of the time he was the synonym of dynamite and at issue. But several days later, the grand jury, after a short deliberation nitroglycerin, and of everything else thin is dangerous, evil and viscous. of a garbled report of the speeches, rendered an indictment. On May 1 detectives broke into Most’s quarters and put him under arrest. The He thus became the target of every police department of the land: following day large newspaper headlines proclaimed that he had been they pulled him off platforms, drove him handcuffed to stations, tried “captured in a house of prostitution” and that he “had taken refuge him on trumped up charges, locked him up, and subjected him to under a bed to escape arrest.” He was sent to Blackwell’s Island for a year. a process of persistent persecution and humiliation. And while the man was gagged and fettered in the penitentiary, brainless reporters He often asserted that nothing that he had endured during his former and unscrupulous newspapers dragged his ideas through the mire, incarcerations on the Continent, or even in England, could compare misrepresented his aims, and wrote blood-curdling stories about his with the humiliation, petty cruelty and inhumanity he was subjected to in alleged life and practices. The good American citizen shivered in fear that prison. Even his most vulnerable feeling was not spared: his beard and prayed to his Maker that this terrible Johann Most be wiped off was shaved, exposing his unfortunate disfi gurement which—as in his the fair American land, hanged, electrocuted, or, still better, lynched. childhood—made him the butt of cruel jokes and insults by guards and But Most refused to be wiped off. Stormy petrel that he was, every fellow prisoners, and a “show object” to idle curiosity-seekers, to whom new imprisonment served only to send him back among his fellows the administration pointed the anarchist prisoner out as some wild freak. more determined than ever to proclaim what he regarded as the truth and to devote himself with new energy to his work. It was this truly While he was in the penitentiary the reactionary forces in extraordinary tenacity, inherent in the man’s character, that the defenders Chicago, aided by the entire press of the country, were preparing of the old order could not forgive. The man-hunt continued (or a period the black deed of November 11, 1887—the judicial murder of of forty-six years, and in every country where Most lived and worked. the fi ve Chicago anarchists. The historic Haymarket riots, it is now proved, were staged by the Chicago police and not by the Like many other immigrants of forty years ago, I came to the workers who were striking for the eight-hour day. The plutocratic United States with an exalted idea of American liberties, and with conspiracy against Chicago’s leading labor men, the farcical trial, the sincere belief in this country as a haven for the oppressed, with execution of the innocent victims—all of these things marked the her wonderful equality of opportunity. That was in 1886. Then beginning of the present widespread reaction in the United States. came my own fi rst experience with the crushing industrial machine. I worked ten hours a day in a factory, in Rochester, N. Y., making ulsters for the munifi cent sum of two dollars and fi fty cents a week, and there I gradually learned to see things in a different light. The great strikes in Illinois which led up to the Haymarket riots, the 20 9 bomb explosion, the arrest of the Chicago anarchists, their farcical against Bakunin were set to work against him. Scurrilous stories were trial and terrible end—these were my early lessons in American circulated, the man and his character were attacked, and everything was liberty. I was perfectly innocent of social ideals at the time, but my done to discredit him with the workers in Germany and the refugees in native rebelliousness against injustice and wrong, and my innate England. Most went his way, did his work and turned the Freiheit into consciousness of what was real and false in the press of the country, a fi ghting revolutionary organ. It was original in method as well as in gave me the fi rst impulse towards the vision for which the Chicago language; for pungency and imagery, for force and humor it had no rival. men had been done to death by the blind furies of wealth and power. His enemies hated him for his piercing wit, but they read the Freiheit .

During this entire time the newspapers of Rochester were fi lled In 1881 the Czar Alexander II fell by the hand of Russian with hair-raising stories about Johann Most and his evil deeds. revolutionaries. The Freiheit appeared with a red border and Most They aroused my interest, but in quite a different way from that wrote: “Hail to the slayers of the tyrant!” The British Home Offi ce intended. I determined some day to know the man. So in 1889, hastened to the support of the Romanoffs. Most was arrested, after two years close reading of anarchist literature, I went to New and tried and sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment in the York. I knew no one there; I knew only the name of Most and that House of Correction at Clerkenwell. Subsequently the Freiheit was of a young Russian student. After hours of search on the East Side suppressed. The time spent in Queen Victoria’s prison was put by I fi nally found the Russian, and he took me to a café frequented Most among his blackest days. Little he foresaw that he was to go by radicals. There I met several persons with whom my life has through a worse hell in democratic America. In December, 1882, remained linked until this day—foremost among them, Alexander he embarked on the steamer Wisconsin for the Land of Promise, Berkman. The same day, Berkman invited me to hear Johann Most. where he was to drink the bitter cup of persecution to the last dregs.

The meeting-place was in a small hall back of a saloon, through America was then still the haven of political refugees. German which one had to pass. It was fi lled with stalwart Germans, drinking, ‘48-’ers, victims of the Bismarckian Exceptional Laws, French smoking and talking. It was there that I fi rst met Most. My fi rst Communards who had escaped the butchery of Thiers and Gallifet, impression of him was surely not prepossessing. He was slightly above Italian and Spanish exiles, Hungarian rebels-all sought her protective medium height, with a large head crowned with bushy greyish hair. shores. Every European land contributed the fl ower of her rebellious But his face almost shocked me: it looked twisted out of all form by young manhood to the galaxy that turned to the United States a prominent swelling of the left side. Only his eyes soothed me. They as the land of liberty. Yet Most was not altogether unaware of the were blue and kindly and sympathetic. Then he ascended the platform changing situation in America, manifested in the big strikes in the and began to speak. Suddenly, as if by magic, his disfi gurement latter part of the seventies, the struggle of the Molly Maguires, and vanished, and his lack of physical distinction was forgotten. He was the police brutality against them. Still he arrived believing that the transformed into some primitive power, radiating life and strength. New World, which kept open doors for so many revolutionists, would The rapid current of his speech, the music of his voice, and his also give him a kindly welcome. It did. At least the foreign elements sparkling wit and biting sarcasm combined into something elemental did, for by them he was royally received. He speedily became the that swept me along and stirred me to the depths. Never before nor most powerful factor in the revolutionary movement in America. in all the years since I fi rst heard him on that hot August evening have I met another such master of the spoken word. It was overwhelming. In 1883 the First International Conference was held in Pittsburgh. It After the lecture, shaken to my very roots, I was introduced to him. was Johann Most who drew up the Magna Charta unanimously accepted

10 19 enthusiastic reception and offered him the editorship of the Freie Presse , The next day I visited the offi ce of the Freiheit , the paper edited by which under his infl uence became the most powerful of the Social him, and from that day began my initiation in the radical movement. Democratic papers. Beside his work as editor, he wrote extensively for other publications and lectured throughout Germany and Switzerland. II His great series on “The Social Revolution and Caesarism in Old Rome” aroused attention even in intellectual circles. His bold criticism of I realized at an early stage in my association with the man how Mommsen, the celebrated historian, brought upon him the anathema cruelly false was the picture of him painted by the American press. of philistine Germany, which could not forgive a mere bookbinder I found this “criminal bent on wholesale slaughter and destruction” for daring to question the accepted authority of the great man. very human, sometimes, indeed all too human. He was afl ame alike with hatred of the institutions that condemned the masses to poverty The growing political reaction in Germany presently produced and ignorance, and passionate devotion to the people out of whose acts of revolutionary violence which in return led to the midst he had come and whose misery he knew from early childhood, Ausnahmegesetze, or Exceptional Laws, of Bismarck, involving the But his hatred of social wrongs, of ugliness and meanness was the complete suppression of all political liberties and the expulsion of natural offspring of his love of beauty, of color, of all the vital things. prominent Socialists. Though Most was in prison at the time, the order reached him as well as those at liberty. After his release in 1378 It is impossible to form even an approximately adequate idea of he was forced to leave Berlin within twenty-four hours. He went to his true personality without some knowledge of his ghastly childhood London, and the fi rst period in his public career was thus closed. and adolescence. And it is particularly necessary to understand the effect of the calamity that befell him at a very early age, and which not V only profoundly infl uenced his character but most probably changed the whole course of his life. I fi rst learned of this tragic event at a Here a new phase begins, no less intense and even of greater performance of “The Merchant of Venice” given by Possart, the importance, in the process of Most’s development, than what had gone famous German actor of the period, then visiting New York. Attending before. For it was in England that he eventually broke away completely the performance with Most, I noticed the unusual effect of Possart’s from the Marxian State idea and from his former political activities. The great art upon him. I knew that my companion was passionately fond leading lights in the Social-Democratic ranks never looked very favourably of the theatre and that he would of tell deprive himself of necessities upon Most. He was too independent, too impatient of discipline, in order to indulge his love of a great performance. Still the nervous too forceful and biting. He could not make peace with shams and tension with which he hung on every word and gesture of Possart compromises. He spared no one in whom he detected either. Therefore, struck me as very peculiar. After the play, on reaching the street, Most he was never persona grata with the Socialist leaders of Germany. gripped my arm until it hurt and cried: “The cruelty of it, the bitter cruelty! To think that I could have been in Possart’s place, perhaps When he came to London and started the publication, Die Freiheit , even greater than he, but for my dreadful face. The blind cruelty of it!” wherein he could give full expression to his ideas, his erstwhile comrades, permitted to remain in Germany on promise of good Later, when he regained possession of himself, he related to me behavior, sensed danger. He was beginning to unfurl new sails; more what he considered the deepest tragedy of his life. At the age of and more he was leaning towards anarchism. This situation could seven he had caught a bad cold which settled in his face. There was not be tolerated. So the old methods employed by Marx and Engels no competent physician in his native town, and his people were too 18 11 poor to afford him proper treatment elsewhere. During fi ve years little presently apparent in increased persecutions by the authorities. His Johann was experimented upon by physicians who had better been activities as propagandist and editor of a labor paper resulted within blacksmiths. They fi nally succeed in driving the evil into the patient’s one year—1872—of no less than forty-three court summonses. These jaw, whereupon gangrene set in, which would have killed the lad had not experiences served to develop his extraordinary native talents. His a leading surgeon accidentally got hold of the case at the last moment. wit and sarcasm, his language, robust and original, lashed the enemy He performed a diffi cult operation, as a result of which the boy’s life with merciless whip and inspired his followers with great enthusiasm. was saved. But his face was entirely disfi gured. He became the target But Most was never allowed to continue his work undisturbed for of derision and ridicule, exposed to insults and indignities at home, at any length of time. The Winter of the same year found him again school and factory, his whole life one long martyrdom of humiliation. in prison, this time under charges of lèse majsté and insult to the Army. But prisons were to Most institutions of learning, of study. He Apparently little things often have the most signifi cant results. Who employed his time in writing a popular version of Marx’s “Capital” knows what Most’s career would have been but for the neglect and and numerous pamphlets. On his release, he was offered the editorship stupidity of the provincial German doctors? Of his great histrionic gifts of the Süddeutsche Volkszeitung , an important Socialist publication. there can be no doubt. One must have heard him on the platform, or This post he held until 1874, when he was elected to the Reichstag. seen his interpretation of old Baumert in Gerhart Hauptmann’s “The Weavers,” at an amateur performance in New York, to realize what an Unlike most of his political colleagues, the young parliamentarian unusual actor was lost in him through his deplorable facial defect. Worse quickly discovered the hollowness of that Holy of Holies. “The yet, it poisoned the very soul of the youth, producing what would now be theatre of marionettes,” Most called the Reichstag. The only service he called an inferiority complex. This remained with Most all through his life. could render in that institution, he said, was to gather material for his pen pictures of the political sycophants prominent at the time. These III proved masterpieces of penetration and humor. His word caricatures of Treitschke, who was deaf, of Bismarck, who could not string two sentences He was born on February 5, 1846, at Augsburg in Germany. His together without huge gulps of brandy, and of many other pompous father, after an adventurous life, was compelled to make a miserable individuals met with great success and roused the delight of the workers. livelihood as copyist in the offi ce of a lawyer. His mother, formerly a governess, was an educated and refi ned woman of liberal ideas. Little Members of the Reichstag are supposed to be secure from political Hannes was a love child, “conceived between the door and the sill,” as prosecution. Not so the irrepressible Wild Man, as the bourgeois press he used to remark jocosely. The fact was that his father, too poor to called Most. For a speech in Berlin he was arrested and sentenced to support a family, could get no licence to marry. The future anarchist the Bastille am Platzensee. Here, for the fi rst time, an attempt was made and hater of all governments was therefore born contrary to police to treat him as a common prisoner. But the administration reckoned regulations. Two years later his parents succeeded in making their without their guest. Most effectively roused the whole of radical Berlin union respectable. They never dreamed of the rebellious nature that to establish a political status in that prison. In consequence, he was able slumbered in their offspring and that would one day mature to a life- to do considerable literary work while incarcerated, among his writings long struggle with all respectability. The father’s earnings were never being an account of his experiences in prison, which was smuggled enough to keep the family from want, but as long as the mother lived out and appeared under the title of “The Bastille am Platzensee.” Most she gave everything to the boy, whom she loved passionately. It was also emerged from this incarceration after thirty-six months, as strong and from her that young Most received his fi rst lessons in reading, writing unscathed in spirit as heretofore. The Berlin workers gave him an

12 17 and arithmetic. But particularly important was her infl uence because Shortly after that the Liberal ministry showed its real colors. All of her liberal and free-thought ideas, which fi xed the atmosphere of labor meetings were suppressed, all political liberties curtailed. The the home and laid the cornerstone of Most’s love of freedom. It was workers replied with an intensive campaign against the growing quite different in the schools of his childhood. There, religion and reaction. Most and others were promptly arrested. In spite of his other subjects were inculcated into the pupils by means of the old- brilliant defence, he and his comrades were convicted of high fashioned rod. One teacher, especially, remained indelibly in Most’s treason and sentenced to fi ve years. It was at this time that he mind. He had a perfect arsenal of implements of torture. Every time composed his fi rst stirring labor song, which was smuggled out this man would get ready to punish a child, he would stand before his of prison and quickly became popular among the workers. To “treasures” lost in contemplation as to what instrument would best fi t this day it is to be heard at the gatherings of toilers in Germany: the particular” crime.” The selection made, the fl ogging would begin, apparently causing the teacher a sadistic delight as great as the agony Wer schafft das Gold zu Tage? of the victim. During this process the man would deliver himself Wer hämmett Erz und Stein? of the following speech: “‘Viciousness is deeply rooted in the heart Wer webet Tuch und Seide? of the child, but the rod will drive it out,’ said Solomon the Wise.” Wer bauet Korn und Wein? Wer gibt den Reichen all’ ihr Brot – As I have said, the fi rst great tragedy in the life of young Most came Und lebt dabei in bitt’rer Not? at the age of seven. The second catastrophe was the loss of his mother, Das sind die Arbeitsmänner, das Proletariat. who died suddenly during a cholera epidemic. The father soon married again, and then began a new martyrdom for the boy. His step-mother Most’s father tried his utmost to get him released. He even hated him with a deadly hatred, and slaved, starved and beat him until succeeded in reaching the brother of the Austrian Empress, who in agony of body and spirit he would run away from home, beg or promised to intervene if the young rebel would sign the appeal for steal food, sleep in parks and hallways, do anything to escape her fury. clemency. But Johann would have none of it. However, he regained his liberty much sooner than he had anticipated. The old ministry Most père often intervened, trying his best to protect the boy and was overthrown and the new one began its reign with a general the little sister who had been born several years before their mother’s amnesty. The main effect of his two years’ imprisonment was to death. But the father being absent most of the day, copying briefs, make Most famous all through Austria. His lecture tours became the step-mother had the fi eld to herself. She must have ploughed veritable triumphs, attended by great numbers of workers. At last, it thoroughly, for Most could never speak about that period of his unable to silence him, the Austrian government decided to expel him. life without horror and indignation. “My whole childhood was a “Forever,” read the sentence. “Forever is a long time,” Most remarked nightmare,” he often told me. “My soul was starved for affection and sarcastically. “Who knows whether Austria will live that long?” my whole being was fi lled with hatred of the woman who had taken the place of my gentle, refi ned mother.” No doubt to this step-mother was On his return to Germany, he fi rst went to Bavaria, where he due much of the boy’s subsequent attitude to tyranny in every form. found very little left of the Socialist organizations. Everything had been crushed by the Franco-Prussian War. But the young agitator was Of Most it may be truly said that the tendencies, inclinations and undismayed. With tremendous energy he set to work infusing new life strivings expressed by the man were not the result of theories. They into the scattered forces, organizing and stabilizing. His success was were inherent in the child and were helped to birth by life itself, the

16 13 hard and bitter school of life that was his. He was a born leader of men. IV Already at the age of twelve this trait became manifest: he organized a strike in the trade school he had entered after he passed the public After the reaction which followed the revolutionary wave of 1848 school with honors. The strike was against the teacher of French, a new forces began to assert themselves throughout Europe. In England despotic man, cordially disliked by all his pupils. As the ringleader, the trades unions were waging a heroic battle for recognition. In France Most was expelled of course. Thereupon his father decided that it the labor movement was making itself felt. In Germany Ferdinand would be best for Hannes to learn a trade. The lad welcomed this as an Lassalle was leading the workers toward new social ideals. Even in escape from the purgatory at home. He chose the honorable profession Russia there was a spiritual awakening, which found expression through of book-binding, impelled toward it by his love for books and the Tchernishevsky and the Kolokol , Alexander Herzen’ s brilliant pub- hope of fi nding much opportunity to read. He did not know then that lication. It was at that vital period that the First International was born. his apprenticeship was to be a continuation of his miserable home life. He was sweated from dawn to night, half starved and continually To the starved spirit of the young Wanderbursch the new Socialist ill-treated. It was at this period that he got his fi rst taste of prison. ideas were like manna. “I was caught up by the stream,” Most told me, “and carried away out of myself. My own tragedy, my own In those days the confessional was obligatory in the Catholic hard fi ght for existence, seemed insignifi cant in the light of the parts of Germany. But Most’s early childhood was spent in a secular great human struggle. From that moment humanity became my atmosphere, and he paid no attention to the confessional. On one goal, progress my aim, and those who barred the way my enemies.” occasion this resulted in a violent encounter with the town priest. The boy was pulled out into the street by his ears and forced to Most threw himself into the movement with all the intensity of kneel on the sidewalk. This served only to increase his antagonism his being. He applied himself to the study of the writings of Lassalle to the Church, and he stopped attending altogether. Thereupon he and other Socialist authors, attended labor meetings and participated was brought before the police and given twenty-four hours’ arrest. in discussions. Very soon he became a member of the Zurich Section of the First International. The dominant leader of that group at the But at last the torment of his apprenticeship came to an end, and time was a man by the name of Hermann Greulich. Most became in 1863 he followed the old usage in vogue in Germany. He took to his ardent pupil and devoted friend. But in later years, when Most the road. Equipped with fi fteen gulden, a great longing for travel outgrew the Marxian State idea, it was Greulich who became his in strange lands, and considerable youthful arrogance, he became a worst enemy and who shrank from no method of attacking him. Wanderbursch , tramping all through Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Hungary, and earning his living the best he could, mostly very Most’s fi rst appearance in Zurich labor ranks has been described badly. His disfi gured face and his delicate physique were against by Greulich as follows: “a shy, slender youth, with a crooked face, him, often making it impossible for him to get work or to hold a who introduced himself as Johannes Most, bookbinder, and asked job, much less to make friends. His poverty and bitterness grew permission to recite something.” Two years later, this shy youth stood and would have thrust him into the abyss, had he not fortunately before an Austrian court charged with high treason. His offence been drawn at this time into the rising tide of the labor movement, consisted in a fi ery speech against the Liberal ministry which in its to become immediately intensely and actively interested in it. attitude towards the labor movement was anything but liberal. The next day the papers began their campaign of calumny of the bold young agitator. That helped Most to a month’s imprisonment.

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